In June 1846 the supercargo and a boat's crew of a small vessel from Sydney procuring trepang and tortoise-shell in Torres Strait, landed upon Mulgrave Island (the vessel being about seven miles off) in order to barter for tortoise-shell.

The natives appeared at first to be friendly enough, but, towards evening some circumstances occurred which induced the boat's crew to re-embark, and they then went to a small sandbank about a mile off to pass the night there.

The supercargo and three men landed, leaving two men in the boat at anchor; about midnight the latter were alarmed at hearing shouts and yells on shore, and, landing in haste, found that the natives had attacked their comrades, whose muskets being damp, were quite useless.
The supercargo and two men were killed--a shot from the boat however dispersed the natives sufficiently for the two men to drag their surviving comrade into the boat, but he had an arrow through the body, and his hands were partially severed, and he soon died.

The bodies of the three people on the sandbank could not be recovered, the natives returning to the attack with showers of arrows, nor could the small force on board the schooner attempt to punish the perpetrators of this unprovoked murder.) The inhabitants of the neighbouring Banks Island are described by Giaom as evincing the same hostility towards Europeans.

Only a few years ago the Italegas, one of the two tribes inhabiting that island, murdered two white men and a boy, who had reached their inhospitable shores in a small boat, probably from a wreck.